Afterimage
by Alory Shannon
Summary: One-shot drabble. Deidara goes to pay his final respects to Sasori. Strange how it comes out sounding more like "I told you so." Pre-DeiSaku fic, of a sort.


Deidara no Iwa was not generally what anyone would consider a patient individual. Thus, it was no real surprise that little more than half an hour after having his arms reattached by Kakuzu, he was seated comfortably on the back of one of his clay birds and winging his way off somewhere else. He was travelling alone, which was technically against the rules, but since Tobi wasn't officially his partner yet, the blonde artist knew he could get away with it.

A few hours later found him guiding the bird through a familiar maze of river-filled canyons, keeping low enough that at times the bird's talons nearly brushed the water below; the place he was headed wasn't too terribly far into River Country, and the Suna nin might've decided to post some sentries there, just in case someone came back. He would have no trouble taking them out before any type of alarm could be sounded, even if Kakuzu _had_ strictly forbidden him from using his hand-mouths for the next three days, so that prospect didn't concern him too much, but there still wasn't any reason to be reckless. But he travelled quickly, and saw and sensed no one, and before long, the cave came into view.

What was left of it, anyway.

The entire roof was gone, collapsed in on itself, and the once-smooth cave floor had cracked and buckled, great slabs of jagged stone thrusting up with glorious irregularity. Broken swords and abandoned kunai and shattered puppets littered the area, their rust-red cloaks spread over and among the rocks like spatters and pools of dried blood.

The blonde artist banked the clay bird, setting it on a slow, spiraling descent to give himself plenty of time to appreciate the full visual impact of the destruction below. Judging by the level of damage done to the area, Sasori must've used his Sandaime Kazekage puppet and its Iron Sand attack, and resorting to his one hundred puppets was Sasori's final move; his opponents must have been very highly skilled.

Deidara couldn't help but smile at that, eyes glinting with a mix of excitement and cruel delight as he recalled those opponents: a decrepit old woman who looked more dead than alive…and the young girl who'd smashed her way into their cave.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, losing himself in the memory of that moment: the brief pulse of painstakingly-controlled chakra being unleashed, working its way through the stone like roots, a low vibration that only someone like himself, whose element made him attuned to the earth around him, would pick up on; for a moment the very stone itself sang of the enthrallingly destructive power weaving through it, lacing it with cracks—and then with a groaning roar and a cloud of dust, it crumbled, the sun's sudden brilliance blindingly bright after spending more than a day wrapped in the darkness of the cave.

The first thing he'd seen once the dust settled had been _her._

Slender, proud, utterly defiant, daylight flooding in over her shoulders to wash the cave with its dimly reflected radiance, a graceful silhouette set against the vibrant blue and white of the sky.

Despite the three additional chakra signatures, for a moment he'd almost thought she was alone--she was certainly the most eye-catching, enough to hold his attention for several moments, at least until that blonde Kyuubi boy had made an ass of himself--and he hadn't been able to hold back a smirk, thinking that this wouldn't take long at all, regardless of the fact that she could shatter rock with nothing more than one small, gloved fist.

The blonde artist's smile only widened as he leaped from the back of the clay bird down onto the precariously uneven floor of the ruined cave, making his way inwards, picking out the remains of a familiar puppet here and there, though they were for the most part smashed beyond recognition.

_She'd_ done all this, and with nothing more than those fists.

He almost, _almost_ regretted missing it.

Moving lightly among the rubble, Deidara soon reached his goal: the face-down body of his former partner. Kicking the scratched-through Suna headband on the ground before it aside with a snort, he spared a brief sideways glance for the puppet-body pinned to the wall within a seal of some kind--designed to render Sasori immobile, no doubt.

"Had to use yourself, hmm?" he mused, addressing the silent, empty-eyed shell. "And they defeated you even then. They must've _really_ been good, yeah."

He received no reply of course, and turned his full attention down onto the figure before him. Like each of the ninety-nine others scattered around the cave, it was largely covered with one of the rust-red cloaks, though that hadn't kept the wood from ruining, and at least half a dozen swords were lodged in it at odd angles…and a few fatal ones as well. A faint trail of some dark, dried liquid (most likely oil, but maybe blood, he couldn't be sure which) seeped from beneath the prostrate figure, and Deidara eyed the two puppets lying on either side of Sasori curiously, absently noting the similarity in one's hair colour but thinking nothing of it, wondering how his former partner, who had taken down entire countries on his own, could have allowed himself to be run through by such simple-looking puppets.

The blonde nin crouched beside the remains, close but not too close, noting the presence of a seal identical to the one pinning Sasori's main body to the wall, his sharply blue, upwards-slanting eyes probing, searching, taking it all in, looking but not touching. Even in death, Sasori's body was still a treacherous machine; moving it a hairsbreadth might very well trigger some final, awesome, unbelievably vicious trap—that would certainly be Sasori's style, building himself to kill even after _he'd_ been killed, twisted and ironic to the last and even beyond.

Idly, Deidara wondered what final expression the puppet master's face held. Anger at his "perfect" art being brought to ruin by a little girl and an old woman? Surprise at his own death? Fear of whatever lay beyond? Or perhaps there'd be that sinister smile, a promise of _I will come again, be it in this world or your dreams, I will come again and see to your end._

Any of those seemed likely. Deidara didn't care enough to risk finding out which of them was correct.

Still, that didn't stop him from settling himself on a nearby rock and contemplating the ocean of ruin surrounding him as he spoke, whether to himself or to the remains of Akasuna no Sasori even he didn't know.

"This is what happens to people who think they'll be around forever, yeah. They're too stiff, too set in their ways, and when they're struck just wrong—they shatter."

The blonde turned a condescending look on the tuft of tousled red hair, though his smirk remained intact.

"You were wrong, you know, about the nature of true art. You weren't eternal after all; just mortal, something with an end just like everything else. And after all your years of hard work, what have you left behind to glorify your view of art, danna?"

He nudged at what was left of a puppet's arm with his foot, the hand still clutching the hilt of an elaborate sword, the rest of it nowhere to be seen.

_"__Nothing._ Nothing beautiful, nothing awe-inspiring, nothing of value. Just broken pieces, things that will lie here until they rot. Already forgotten."

Pausing, he turned a look back to where the entrance to the cave had been.

"…Though you might have gone out with a bang after all…at least you _could_ have."

Blue eyes gleamed, and he leaned in towards the redhead's body just slightly, as if the added intensity might get him a reply.

"You saw it, didn't you, danna? You fought her, watched her move, saw her shatter things into a million pieces. Even you would've had to admit it, because that...that must have been _art,_ yeah."

The puppet master is no more or less responsive now than he's ever been; but for once, Sasori didn't disagree. Deidara rather liked the change.

He savoured getting in that last word for a long while before musing aloud, a sly grin stretching across his face, "You know, it's probably a good thing I didn't catch that girl's name." Slowly he stood, brushing the dirt off his cloak before turning to go, turning his back on his danna for the last time. "If I had, I might've actually been tempted to try to track her down and find a way to _thank_ her for proving you wrong."

The former Iwa-nin made a few rapid one-handed seals, and moments later his clay bird swooped down out of the sky; in a twinkling the blonde artist leaped aboard and was gone, flying high this time, out of range if not out of sight, never once looking back.

* * *

Deidara, Sasori, Sakura - I see them when I close my eyes to think, to sleep, to dream: those flickers of you, your brief and brilliant existence, branded on the back of my eyelids, forever burned into my memory.


End file.
